Seat Belt Failures & Unlatching During Rollover Accidents

In rollover accidents seatbelts can unlatch or open during the rollover, allowing the occupants to be tossed around in the vehicle without any protection, ejected out of the vehicle and exposing them serious head injuries, spinal cord injuries, paralysis and death. Seatbelts are designed to keep the occupant belted and allow the occupant to ride down the energy of a crash or rollover in a semi-controlled environment. Serous injuries or death can result from:

• Seat belt buckles that inertially unlatch during a rollover accident
• Shoulder belts that allows too much slack (window shade seat belt design)
• Automatic or door mounted seatbelts that can cause serious injuries and death if a door opens during a rollover, overturn or collision
• Shoulder belt retractors that skip or fail to hold under load
• Shoulder only belt strangulations (clothes line effect) and neck and spinal injuries
• Lap only seat belts in rear seat and center seating positions of many vehicles
• GEN 3 Seat belt buckles / Chrysler Generation 3 / inadvertent or unintentional unlatching or releasing during rollovers

Rollover & Defective Seatbelts Don't Mix

During a suv rollover, truck or van rollover, the vehicle and its occupants are subjected to potentially deadly forces. This is why a vehicle must be crashworthy, in order to protect the occupants during a crash. When a car, truck or SUV that is designed to be crashworthy , the design helps to minimize the destructive effect of a rollover / accident by distributing the deceleration energy over as longer a period of time, over as large a surface area as possible and to parts of the body that are more capable of withstanding such forces. A rollover crashworthiness case typically involves the failure to one or more components to meet these basic design objectives, such as the seatbelts, the seatback, the interior padding, the roof, the door locks / latches and the structural design of the vehicle itself. In a typical rollover a properly designed and working seat belt safety restraint system is a must for survival. Seatbelts are designed to perform a central role in occupant protection. Properly designed seat belts should restrain the driver and passengers by preventing ejection and minimizing their violent movement within the vehicle during a rollover or crash.

Rollover & Seat Belt Failure Lawsuit

If you or a member of your family has been involved in a SUV rollover accident, van rollover, truck rollover, over turn or other collision in which seatbelt failed or the seatbelt buckles failed to hold or restrain on impact or during a rollover and the occupants were ejected, seriously injured or killed, then contact us now.